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| Arkhangelsk (Arkhangelsk oblast), coat of arms (1998) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| Early illustration (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| The Temptation of Christ, 1854 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| Markion of Sinope (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
In the Hebrew Bible God is
depicted as the source of both light and darkness, as in Isaiah 45:6-7.[1] However this concept of
"darkness" or "evil" was not yet personified as "the devil," a later development
in Jewish thought.[2]
The author of the Books of Chronicles
is thought to have first introduced the notion of "divine
intermediaries", not found in the earlier parts of the Hebrew Bible. The
main evidence adduced by theologians to support this is 1 Chronicles 21, a
reworked version of 2 Samuel 24.
This change is made
most evident in the Chronicler's treatment of 2 Samuel 24:1
"And
again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David
against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah." (KJV)
which in 1
Chronicles 21:1 becomes:
"And
Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel." (KJV)
While in the book of
Samuel, YHWH himself is
the agent in punishing Israel, while in 1 Chronicles, an "adversary"
is introduced. This is usually taken as the result of Persian dualism on Israelite
demonology.
Scholars are divided on whether in Chronicles, "the
adversary" had already become a proper name, "the Adversary"
(Satan). The traditional opinion has been that this is the case, arguing from
the absence of the definite article in שטן "adversary". S. Japhet in her The Ideology of the
Book of Chronicles and its Place in Biblical Thought (1989) argued against mainstream
opinion in suggesting that שטן still had the generic meaning and only became the proper name
"Satan" at a later date, by about the 2nd century BC.[3]
Tertullian accuses Marcion of Sinope,
the first major heretic
of Christianity in the 1st century, that he "[held that] the Old
Testament was a scandal to the faithful … and … accounted for it by postulating
[that Jehovah was] a secondary deity, a demiurgus, who was god, in a
sense, but not the supreme God; he was just, rigidly just, he had his good
qualities, but he was not the good god, who was Father of Our Lord Jesus
Christ."[4] The Church condemned his
writings as heretical.
John Arendzen (1909) in
the Catholic
Encyclopedia (1913) mentions that Eusebius accused Apelles, the
2nd-century AD Gnostic, of considering the Inspirer of Old-Testament prophecies
to be not a god, but an evil angel.[5]
Hegemonius (4th century)
accuses the Persian prophet Mani, founder of the
Manichaean sect in the 3rd century AD, identified Jehovah as "the devil
god which created the world"[6] and said that "he who spoke
with Moses, the Jews, and the priests … is the [Prince] of Darkness, … not the
god of truth."[7]
According to their
critics, these heretics referred to the Abrahamic God variously as "a demiurgus",[4] "an evil angel",[5] "the devil god",[6] "the Prince of Darkness",[7] "the source of all evil",[8] "the Devil",[9] "a demon",[10] "a cruel, wrathful, warlike
tyrant",[11] "Satan"[12] and "the first beast of the
book of Revelation".[13]
Nicholas
Weber in the Catholic Encyclopedia article Albigenses
(1907) notes that the enemies of the Albigenses, a Christian sect in 12th- and
13th-century France, a branch of the Cathari, accused them that
their doctrine held that "the creator … of the material world … is the
source of all evil … He created the human body and is the author of sin … The
Old Testament must be either partly or entirely ascribed to him; whereas the
New Testament is the revelation of the beneficent God."[8] They ultimately came into conflict
with both the civil order and the Church which led to the
Albigensian Crusade.
The 18th-century
Anglo-American philosopher Thomas
Paine wrote in The Age of Reason that "Whenever we
read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous
executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible
is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon,
than the Word of God."[10]
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